


The Other Half

by greenpen



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:37:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6184499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenpen/pseuds/greenpen





	1. Chapter 1

When the pain becomes too much to bear, he doubles the dosage. 

When he doubles the dosage, he starts sleeping during the day.

When he starts sleeping during the day, he lies awake at night, thinking, racing.

He turns.

She stares back at him.

“You’re not sleeping.”

He turns away now. Toward the ceiling.

“No.”

“How long?”

“How long have you known?”

“Two weeks.”

“Two weeks…”

“We’re going to the doctor tomorrow.”

Maybe she’s forgotten. He already had an appointment.

. . . . 

Some days are better than others. Obviously. 

Some of her days are better than others. Some of everyone’s are.

She tells herself this. So does he. They tell each other this.

It makes the severity of their poles seem less than it really is. It makes the lows higher, the highs lower. Everything plateaus into an even keel, a sinusoid wave heading toward zero.

Zero.

Zero sum.

As much positive as negative, but the altitude less.

The fall is less.

She rationalizes the bad. So does he. She qualifies it. Your muscles have to relearn it, she says. He can’t button his own shirt. His fingers contort, almost misshapen, straining. She makes a fist around them, then does it for him.

 _There_.

Well, there.

. . . . 

Eventually he does relearn it. He can button his own shirt. He can tie his own shoes. He studies the movements, hours on end, while she’s at work and Franny’s at school. He squeezes a tennis ball one hundred times. 

He stirs at her alarm, six o’clock on the dot, every day. He can’t bring himself to tell her to let him sleep more. This is before the double dosage. 

She turns, examines him. Perhaps she’s checking for his rising chest. Make sure he’s still breathing. He is. He never stops _breathing_ during the middle of the night. 

She runs a hand through her hair, then through his, around the back, by his neck. His hair has grown back sort of patchy, around the scar. It’s still uneven. She likes it that way, oddly. 

“Mm.” 

“Don’t wake up.” 

“ _You_ don’t wake up.” 

“I have to get her ready for school.” 

“It’s six in the morning.” 

“Go back to sleep.” 

The bed is empty next to him now. She closes the bathroom door. He hears the water come on. 

He dozes off again. Later she’ll come in and sit on the edge of the bed next to him, run her fingers up and down his shirtsleeve, which will wake him, open his eyes sleepily. 

“Hey? Don’t sleep all day.” She smiles and stands, runs her fingers through his hair again, over the scar this time, the way she did in Berlin. 

. . . . 

He’s awake now. He listens for the door to shut, the din of their shoes in the hallway growing fainter.

He’s like a kid waiting for his parents to leave the house. It’s the only time he feels free. 

No, not free. _Not_ free. 

Uninhibited. 

He wakes, slowly. Muscles still hurt. Plus he’s getting old. That doesn’t help. 

He does breathing exercises, four sets of eight. He likes to start like this. 

He wonders if he’s getting a little obsessive. 

He gets in the shower next. The bathroom’s still a little steamy. It opens up his muscles. They had a handrail installed. He slipped once.

He sits down at the end of the bed to towel himself off, ankles last. 

He’s feeling ambitious today and reaches for the white button-down. Worst comes to worst he’ll leave it half-open. Whose conventions will he disrupt? 

He works slowly at each button, at the cuffs. The buttons are tiny as fuck. How did he ever do this before?

He thinks about this act, placing the open hole over the tiny disc of plastic. At an angle, but not too severe. Go in at ninety degrees and it’s too hard to hold the button straight, it slips from his fingers. Forty-five is not open enough to maneuver the fabric around. Seventy’s more like it. If he presses down on the edge of the button with his fingernail he can lever it out, away from his chest, lay the open fabric over, feel for hard and shiny, press down with fore and middle finger, hope for the best. 

Physics.

It takes him a few tries at least. Each is a triumph. 

_Look, look what I did today! Eight buttons, all down the front! And even the little fuckers on the sleeves!_

Meanwhile she’s out saving the world. 

A half-hour’s gone already and he’s still naked from the waist down. 

Fuck it. 

He puts on sweatpants. 

He walks into the kitchen and fills the kettle with water. She’s opened a tea bag for him already, laid it out next to the stove. Also: a bowl, a half-cup of granola, berries too. 

He reaches into the fridge to grab the yogurt. The lid is opened already, carefully peeled back and then replaced. He spoons it into the bowl and stirs. 

He makes the tea. 

He sits at the table and eats. He drinks. He scrolls through his iPad, what new horror taking place out on the steps, across the ocean, behind the walls? 

He doesn’t like to talk about this stuff with her anymore, nor she with him. He can tell, in her eyes, that it’s getting worse. What she won’t tell him, and what he won’t read in the news. He can see it in her eyes, in her exhalations. She shivers sometimes, for no reason, and he wonders what awful thing she’s just remembered, what image her brain has recalled for her. 

Uncalled. _That was uncalled for_. He imagines her teaching at the front of a class. He imagines her scolding her daughter. He imagines her answering a phone call. 

After breakfast he washes the dishes, slowly, carefully, warm water. He lays the bowl and mug and spoon on the drying rack. They don’t have a dishwasher. She dreams of one. She wants one for him. He likes it better this way. He likes the smooth, rhythmic motions, circular. Afterward he squeezes the sponge dry, four sets of four. 

Today is a good day. Today he’ll go to the park. It’s only six blocks, he can afford it. He takes a bottle of water along. It’s empty by the time he gets there. 

He takes his iPad, too, and plays memory games on it for an hour or two until lunchtime. 

She comes home for lunch. Like some weird 1950’s inversion. In his darker hours he suspects she’s checking up on him, which is true, but her motives are tinged with malice and pity, and he can’t stand it, and he can’t stand her, and he hates himself for it, and he sulks. 

But today is a good day. He wants to be there, he wants to be alone with her. He wonders what she’ll say about his wardrobe choice. Maybe nothing. Maybe she’ll marvel at his eight buttons, all down the front. 

He walks through the apartment door. Her coat is hanging on the back of the door in the entry, her keys tossed in the dish nearby. She’s standing by the stove, steam in the air. He smells cheese, garlic, tomato. 

He eases up slowly behind her, quietly. 

“You making this for me?” he whispers. He runs his hands down her shoulders, settles at her hips. 

“I thought I’d let you starve.” 

“Plenty of half-opened yogurts in the fridge, I’m sure.” 

That gets a laugh. 

“You’re making pasta.” 

“I’m _assembling_ it,” she says. “I got the kind you like, from the market. The fresh one, the long strips.” 

“Pappardelle,” he says in a fake Italian accent. 

She stirs the sauce in the pan, lets the wooden spoon rest on the edge of the stove. 

He brushes the hair around her shoulder, kisses her on the neck, open-mouthed. 

“I like watching you cook,” he says. 

“You like eating.” 

“I like watching you move.” 

He inhales, breathes in the smell. 

She picks up the spoon again and he runs his hand down her arm, rustles her sleeve. He covers her hand with his own, slightly trembling. 

He’s not as steady as he used to be. 

“What’s with you?” she says, turning around finally, hint of a smile. 

“Nothing.” 

“Good day?” 

“Getting better.” 

“Really?” 

“I think we could knock it up to an eight, maybe nine. And—” He glances around her at the stove clock. “It’s only twelve-thirty.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” he says, eyebrows raised. 

She reaches up to kiss him then, hands in his hair again. She circles her fingers around his ear, the way she would herself, tucking strands behind her ear, trailing fingertips down his neck. 

He reaches behind her and switches the stove off, a crafty maneuver that makes him proud, tactile 180-degree movement of thumb and forefinger, in tandem, until the click. 

“I missed you,” she says. 

“It’s only twelve-thirty.” 

She pauses. She looks away.

“I don’t want to talk about work.” 

“Ok, let’s not talk about work.” 

He leans down to kiss her again, lets his hand drop to her blouse, an instinct maybe, twenty-some odd years of reflex motor movement ingrained into his brain, still. He fingers the buttons clumsily. She looks on. 

“Fuck it,” she says finally, lifts the blouse up and over her head. It’s beautiful, graceful, a dance she’s playing. He marvels. She snakes her arm around his waist, up the back of his shirt, open and loose, then beneath the waistband of his sweatpants. She pulls him closer and starts to work at his buttons. 

She undoes it all in ten seconds, tops, his entire morning. He tries not to think about it. She’s kissing him now. Breathing ragged, the both of them. 

He pulls his hands to her face, smooths them over her cheeks, her hair rustled underneath, and lets her undress them. 

. . . . 

Sex is the only fine motor skill he’s still confident he can perform well. He steps forward and she backs up against the edge of the counter. He is not nearly as strong as he used to be but still looms over her, powerful. He’s overwhelming. 

And it helps that he’s had practice. He’s allowed himself to get used to the movements. He knows how to please her, in other words. Sometimes he can even surprise her. Or she him. It’s exciting, considering.

He lowers his hands to her waist, slight still, hip bone protruding, and picks her up onto the counter.She pulls him forward by the front of his sweatpants. 

She swallows and lets out a stifled noise, somewhere between aroused and exhausted. He can’t wait any longer and thrusts into her a second later. She presses her fingers into his shoulder blades, harder than she’d intended. 

He doesn’t fuck her. He doesn’t make love to her. Neither encapsulates what they’re doing: the long, drawn-out consummation of their years of aversion, the near misses, the betrayal. It’s an apology, from either of them. They make amends, each time, a consolation for the time spent apart. For his brain damage; for her nightmares.

She doesn’t deny him anything, not that he asks for much anyway. He needs her love, unconditionally. To her this is not unreasonable. She knows this because of the bad days, and because on those days she says to him, “I love you,” and he says nothing. And she responds in kind, “Well I do.” As if it is the one truth about her, the one unshifting fact. 

Their not-fucking, not-love-making borders on desperation. She clings to him, kisses him messily. He runs his hands all over, greedily, unsure what he’s searching for. 

She climaxes first, he a few seconds later. The sound that escapes from her is retracted, pent-up, a terribly erotic noise that does him in. He kisses her after, slower, gentler than whatever they just did. He cradles the back of her head as she catches her breath. 

Afterward she picks up his shirt from the kitchen floor. He extends both arms and she fits the fabric over them. She works on the buttons for him, standing close, flush against his chest. He looks down, studies her nimble fingers, the effortless grace of their movement. 

She can feel him staring and doesn’t look up. She doesn’t want it to seem mindless. She focuses, for his sake. She goes slow. 

When she’s done she smooths her hand over the placket of his shirt, adjusts the collar, tries to get out some of the wrinkles. The 1950’s scene turns back on itself. He feels uninhibited again, not desperate. He feels loved. 

There, she says, and it turns back again. 


	2. Chapter 2

She’s never followed anyone anywhere. 

She’s not sure if she’s doing it right.

She’s not sure if she’s doing it for the right reasons. 

After Berlin, after Landstuhl, after he woke up, they tell him he’ll need extensive rehabilitation. Speech therapy, physical therapy, psychotherapy. Months. Maybe longer than months. Maybe years. 

They won’t let him do it alone. The doctors dance around this fact, giving her sideways glances, the woman who’s there every day, for every check-in, every morning of rounds. 

She understands what they mean, though she’s not sure if he does. 

She sees the way forward, a long, looming shadow, cast beneath a towering building. She sees it. 

One day she tells him, “You can’t do this alone.” She’s sitting next to his hospital bed, he’s just eaten breakfast, or what he could get down of it. He’s gotten very thin. 

“You just can’t.” 

“I know,” he says. 

She was expecting more argument. Some defiant declaration of ability. 

“I’m going to help you.” 

“You don’t have to.” 

“I know,” she says. “But I’m going to.” 

“It’s not fair.” 

“What?” 

“Looking after me. Helping me. Walk… or speak. Tie my shoes. You’re better than that.” 

She takes a hold of his hand. She swallows. 

“I… I’m not, Quinn.” 

“You should be off saving the world, not… preparing my meals for me and making sure I get dressed in the morning.” 

“I don’t want to save the world,” she says, shaking her head. 

She starts to cry, sitting next to him. Her mouth begins to tremble. 

“I don’t want to save the world,” she says again. “Don’t be a martyr.” 

“What if it doesn’t work?” 

“So what?” 

“It’ll be worse than you think.” 

“So what?” 

She wants to laugh, to smile even. She takes a hand to his face, brushes the hair off the edges of his forehead. She’s taken to doing this now. He sees then how she's changed. She's a mother now, comforting a broken, crying child. 

“You just don’t get it,” he says finally. 

“Get _what_?” 

She wants to scream at him. If she’s ever met anyone more stubborn than herself, it’s him. 

“You just don’t.” 

“Neither do you.” 

She leans in and kisses him softly, tentatively, on the mouth. He’s lax against her but grabs tightly onto her wrist. She brings her hand to his face and kisses the top of his cheek, just beneath his eye. 

“I’m staying,” she says softly, and they never talk about it again. 

. . . . 

She follows him to New York. 

He’s treated regularly on the Mt. Sinai Hospital and she looks for an apartment nearby for the three of them. Franny comes when he’s still in the hospital. She wants her to get used to the city and the sounds before introducing another unknown into her life. Too often she feels like she’s dragging her along, and shouldn’t it be the other way around? 

She explains what’s happened to them as if it’s not _actually_ happened to them, as if it’s happening to their neighbors, or characters in a story. 

“You know in that book, when the penguin moves all the way from the South Pole to the North Pole?” 

“Augustine?”

“Yeah… And you know how at first she was so scared, because of how far it is? And everything looks so different and unfamiliar?”

“Yeah.” 

“Well…” 

She feels like the shittiest mother. 

. . . . 

She remembers life, five, six years ago it was now. Before almost all of it. Driving home from Langley, into the city, taking the surface streets at the end. Driving slowly, below the speed limit even. Slow enough she could peer into the windows of the houses lined along the street.

She remembers looking through that yellow glow, backs of heads, or maybe faces even, just people living their normal lives. With other people. Dinner at seven, watch television the rest of the night, fall asleep on the couch. 

Sometimes she’d imagine their conversations. She was curious, how the other half lived. 

And it made her feel less alone. 

On some of those nights, she’d venture back out into the darkness, into low-lit bars, the kind frequented by high-ranking political staffers playing hooky from their own marriages. That was thrilling, that was fun. 

Sometimes she misses that. Not the thrill, not the fun, not the tall, dark men in expensive suits. The meaningless sex. The sex, devoid of meaning, and attachment, and love. Just lust. Just fucking. 

She thinks about it, walking home from work now, peering up, into the apartments lining the street, going five, ten, twenty stories up. Even people in this city don’t close the curtains. They have nothing to hide, or maybe they’re just not thinking. She can't see at this angle. 

They’re not thinking about the people scuffling below, looking up instead of down, wondering how. 

She walks by a couple, younger than she—everyone seems younger than she is now—his hand situated at the small of her back, prodding her along. They’re going somewhere. He whispers something into her ear, his breath makes fog in front of him. 

She guesses they’re going somewhere to fuck in secret. This appeases her. 

(Or maybe they’re husband and wife.)

. . . . 

After seven months all his treatment is outpatient and he finally comes home. “Home” is what she says, at least. She knows it’s just another place for him to live, at this point at least. There’s nothing that makes it home, not like for her. His kid isn’t there, it’s not close to his work.

It’s just her, and she’s not sure it’s enough. 

It’s difficult. 

It—this thing she calls whatever they’re both doing, one at a time, in parallel, in tandem, sometimes separate. 

_It’s going to be hard._

_It will get easier._

_How is it?_

_This is how it is._

It—this thing she can’t define, nor he, nor anyone else orbiting around the periphery of their increasingly smaller life together. 

She holds onto her promise, back in Germany, because _it_ is the only thing that makes her not want to cry herself to sleep at night when she thinks of this man she used to know, and this man she knows now, sleeping next to her (some nights, some nights on the couch, because he can’t sleep), and her daughter, and the mess of it all, and the feeling of a thin veil of white held in front of her eyes, obscuring her view just enough to feel as though she’s losing her sight and going blind, painstakingly, and her hands are shaking. 

_Keep it together._

They both put brave faces on. 

. . . . 

“Are you happy?” she asks him one day. It’s spring, just. A year later.

He’s lying next to her in bed. He’s kicked off the covers, pushed them to the end of the bed. 

He turns his head toward her. She’s folded the pillow in half under her head, rests both hands beneath her cheek. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Are you happy?” 

“I think so.” 

“You’re not sure?” 

“I don’t… are you happy?” 

She shifts a little. 

“Almost.” 

“I think maybe I’m not cut out for happy.” 

“I used to think that.”

He turns back up toward the ceiling. 

“Everything changed when I realized, there was someone else outside of me.” 

“Franny?” 

“Yes.” 

“She makes you happy.” 

It’s not a question but she answers anyway: “Yes.” 

“Still… _almost_.”

She reaches her hand out, runs her fingers through his hair at the side. 

“Hey…”

“Hey what?” 

“It’s better than a lie.” 


	3. Chapter 3

“There,” she says. 

He breathes in, out, tries not to feel condescended to, fails, wants to walk away. 

“Thank you,” he says, despite himself. 

She angles her face up toward him, her fingers still on the edges of his shirt. 

He brings his useless hands to her face, brushes the hair away from her eyes. 

He leans down to kiss her and all is forgotten.

She just does that to him. He’s gotten used to not fighting it anymore. 

“Stay. Take the rest of the day off work. Stay with me.” 

“I can’t.” 

“Of course you can.” 

“I need to get back.” 

“They can’t do without you for five more hours?” 

“I don’t want to fight about it.” 

She says this sometimes, in conversations he doesn’t realize are arguments, when she just wants to stop talking. He wishes she would just say, _I don’t want to talk to you anymore_. He knows this is what she actually means. 

_Please stop talking to me. I can’t bear to speak to you anymore._

“I’m sorry.” 

“Let’s have lunch.” 

He rubs her back as she turns and serves the pasta into bowls. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again. 

He knows it shouldn’t be this hard. He knows she’s being unreasonable and overly sensitive. He knows that she _could_ take the day off and if she doesn’t want to it’s not because she can’t. This small, nagging, indelicate thought dances around in the back of his head, growing large. It’s the lump in his throat, the sinking stone in his gut. 

It’s like a guilty memory, lingering. Every few minutes he remembers, almost by accident: this woman he loves won’t let him. 

. . . . 

He sends her on her way at quarter past one. He listens to the hum of the elevator after he shuts the door, then the familiar ding as she goes back out into the world. 

Their hour of pseudo-bliss is over. They eat, he says he’ll wash all the dishes and don’t worry about it. She acquiesces and uses the extra ten minutes to thank him. 

She’s becoming like that. Moody. In moods. Good and bad and volatile and he can’t help but wonder, _Is it me? Was she always like this? Were we always like this?_

Their life together becomes divided into good and bad. Good days and bad ones. Good work and bad outcomes. 

_Work was good today?_

_It’s not a good time._

_It’s a bad time._

_You good?_

_Things are getting really bad._

Things, all the things they care about. 

He has so much time to _think_ now. 

He thinks about his body: aging, decaying, at rapid rate. 

He wonders what kind of father he is for Franny. He wonders how she sees him, this strange man in her life. He wonders when she’ll start remembering, and what her mother will tell her. He doesn’t imagine he’ll have any say. 

He thinks about his own son now, more than ever, because of Franny and because he thinks Carrie wants him to. She doesn’t bring it up, and neither does he. Maybe he should. Maybe because he cheated death and came back, and he can walk again. That’s what his shrink would say. 

That he has a second chance and he should use it. He should tie up loose ends. He should take this second shot at life and _do_ something with it, instead of sitting around all day, feeling sorry for himself and wishing she’d never found him. 

Sometimes he crafts the worst narratives. 

What did Julia tell him? She would have known, because everyone knew. He hasn’t heard from her in five years. He hasn’t seen his son in even longer. 

But he wonders if he knows. He wonders if he thought to himself, _That’s my father._

_I have his eyes and his hair and his shy smile._

_His blood is my blood._

In the hospital, he almost ran out. The blackness, congealing inside of him, coughed up like some kind of thick satan’s sludge, coating his insides. He still expects it to come out of him, like lava from a dormant volcano. 

He looks at his sleeve, but there’s nothing there. 

. . . . 

He calls it the late afternoon lull. His mind is so used to working, to solving puzzles, guessing next moves. 

The most involved thing he does now is guess when she will be home. Six? Seven? Eight-thirty? Ten? 

Not ten in a while. 

He can’t let his mind wander. He can’t let himself think of things he was doing two years ago, three, five, ten. Shuffling through vibrant cities, snaking through deserts. Mattering. 

He can’t let himself think about that. He knows he is an addict in recovery, and he knows he cannot have that anymore. This is the life he’s chosen, this is the life he has. Partner. Dad (ish). Real life. 

He wants to call his son. He wants to ask him how things are, how’s the baseball team. He thinks he would play baseball. 

But even still, he can’t let his mind wander too far in that direction. He lives inside boundaries. It takes great discipline, extraordinary perseverance: to go from a limitless existence to one that fits neatly into a box. 

He is still the man whose photograph was splayed across cable news television for weeks on end, the subject of op-eds in the _New York Times_ , _Washington Post_ , _The Guardian, Bild_. Everyone knew his face and his story and what had gotten him to here. Until they didn’t. 

And she brought him back, and kept him close, and made him feel like no one was ever staring. 

He really can’t let his mind wander. So he sleeps instead. 

. . . . 

He goes to pick up Franny at half past three. He walks the five blocks to her school, counting steps. Not in his head, on his wristwatch, which does it for him. He is becoming obsessive about numbers. They are the measurement of his days now. How many and how far and too much, or not enough. 

It is just under a thousand to her school. That’s more than yesterday but not as many as two days ago when he had to take a detour for construction. In his head he compiles encyclopedic knowledge of routes and steps and walkways and timetables. He replaces coordinates and terrorist leaders with this information, swapping it out. If he was savvy he would cross-reference, compiling longitude and latitude at their apartment, her school, estimating the distance that way. 

But not yet. 

The bell of school letting out fills his ears. He looks up, expectantly, for her red hair and pincurls. She comes barreling down the steps a second later, two at a time.

“I get to write a book!” she says. She’s holding a sheet of paper in her hands, folded into quarters. 

“A whole book?” 

“Yeah, it’s called _The Book About Me_ and I get to write all the lines in it _and_ color all the pictures.” 

“That’s pretty cool,” he says, taking the book bag from off her back. It’s light as a feather but she somehow looks engulfed by it. He drapes one of the pink and blue straps over his shoulder and extends his other arm to hers. 

She takes his hand as she recounts the tales of recess, playtime, the book she read, and Henry Townsend, who keeps teasing her about her red hair. Secretly Quinn suspects Henry likes Franny, the way five-year-olds usually do, in a completely oblivious way. 

“Is Mommy going to be home early tonight?” 

“I’m not sure. Why?” 

“Well I have to ask her some of these questions.”

“Questions?” 

“For my book!” 

“Oh… well maybe I could help with some of them.” 

She looks away, as if the thought never dawned on her, which hurts him a little. Even the five-year-old thinks he’s just a guest.

“Ok.” 

“Ok.” 

She squeezes his hand a little tighter as they cross Amsterdam together. At home he spreads peanut butter over celery, her favorite snack, which also happens to be just easy enough that he can do it and just challenging enough to make him feel accomplished. 

He unfolds her white paper on the counter and reads. 

_A Book About Me_

 

 _“I live with ______________________________________________________________”_  

_“My favorite thing to do on the weekend is ______________________________”_

_“My favorite book is ____________________________________________________”_

_“My favorite thing to eat is ______________________________________________”_

_“When I grow up I want to be ____________________________________________”_

. . . . 

He gets a text from her at seven. 

_won’t be home for another hour. can you put fran to bed?_

He’s not counting, but it’s the third time this month. 

He puts Franny to bed. He watches her brush her teeth, studies her dexterous fingers, how they form a fist, tightly gripped, rotating like pistons. 

She requests two stories, like always. Somewhere along the line—before he came along—her mother set the expectation of two stories per night, and nothing less will ever do. She’s memorized most of them. He thinks that must make her feel smarter. She is like her mother in that way. 

He turns the pages of the book, running his forefinger across his bottom lip for traction. It’s much easier than pinching his fingers together. It’s fractional movement he’s not yet mastered. He doesn’t have the precision. He fears he will shake. He fears tremors. 

Franny falls asleep halfway through the second book. Slowly he picks himself up, fights the urge to make a noise. He really is getting old. 

It’s all perfectly routine. Somewhere along the line he became a father to this little girl, and that is all that matters. 

He shudders to think if she ever took her away.

. . . . 

The last thing he does most days is wait for her to come home. 

Despite his best efforts, his world still circles around her. He is so goddamn dependent on her it makes him sick. _Is this love_ , he thinks. _Or a craving?_

These are the things that keep him up at night, when he should be sleeping. She’s there beside him and he’s just there, like dead air, filling some role or need or position she needs to have filled. If it wasn’t him, who then? 

The sad truth he has finally admitted to himself is that she is his but he is not hers. 

She gets home around eight, as promised. He hears the door shut, the click of the lock, the shuffle as she takes off her shoes. The first thing she does, invariably, is take off her shoes. 

She walks up to him slowly, sitting in the armchair in the living room, scrolling through the iPad. 

“Hey,” she says, hands over his shoulders. 

She sings it almost: “He-ey.” 

“Hey.” 

She angles her neck around his, runs her fingers through his hair. 

“Whatcha doin’?” 

“Nothing.” Then: “Games. Reading.” 

“Mm…” 

“Franny’s asleep.” 

“Good.” Then: “Thank you.” 

“You hungry?” 

He looks up from the screen now. 

“Starving.” 

“I’ll make you something.” 

“That’s ok.” 

“I don’t mind.” 

“I’ll just grab some leftovers.” 

She walks into the kitchen then, opens the refrigerator door and stares. 

“You know you’re letting all the cold out.” 

“I know,” she says, turning around. She has the container of pasta from this afternoon in her hands. 

She walks over to the cabinet to get a fork, kicking the door shut with her heel. 

“At least let me heat it up for you.” 

“I love cold pasta. And I’m not an invalid.” 

“Well, I didn’t say you were.” 

He’s sitting at the counter now. 

“How was your day?” she says. 

“Same ol’, same ol’.” 

“Really?” 

She smiles.

“Well, except for you.” 

“Uh huh.” 

“Yes, that was… special.

She walks over to him then, places the container on the counter. He pulls her into an embrace, her arm idly around his neck, beneath the collar of his shirt. 

“What’s this?” she says, pulling the folded white paper in front of her. 

“Oh.” 

“Homework?” 

“I think it’s an assignment.” 

“For _home_.” 

She starts reading. 

“When’s it due?” 

“Monday, I think.” 

“Jesus.” 

“What?”

“I won’t have time to help her with this over the weekend.” 

“You have to work?” 

“The… yes, I have to work.” 

“You worked last weekend.” 

“Just a little though. Maybe Saturday… morning.” 

“Well then I can help her with it.” 

“With the, and I quote, Book About Me?”

“Sure.” 

“Ok.” 

She tries and fails to hide the surprise in her voice. 

“You don't think I’m up for it?”

“No, I just... I didn't think you’d be into it.” 

“Well, I am.” 

She gets up from his lap then and starts washing the empty dishes. 

“Good.” 

“You don't have a problem with me helping her, do you?” 

She shakes her head no. 

“I just didn't think—I didn't think you’d want to help answer... some of those questions.” 

“You mean the first one?”

“Which one is that?” 

“‘I live with’ and then a big blank line.” 

“Well…” 

“Well what?” 

“Well what would you answer?” 

He pauses, thinks it over. How she would want him to answer. How he wants to answer. It seems like a trap. He proceeds with caution.

“I live with my mom.” 

“And?” 

“And Peter.” 

“ _Peter_?”

“Me,” he says, eyebrows raised.

“Just…‘Peter’?” 

“Sure.” 

“That makes you sound like you’re our… dog or something. Our pet…. ‘Peter,’ really?” 

“I live with my mom and her crippled boyfriend,’” he recites in mock tone. 

She narrows her eyes at him. 

“No.” 

“No…” he repeats. She’s so damn silent, it’s driving him crazy. Why won’t she just fucking say it? What is stopping her? 

“You’re not my crippled boyfriend.” 

“Traumatized?” 

She opens her mouth as if it to start in on him, or on some speech she’s memorized previously, awake during nights when he can’t sleep and she pretends not to notice. 

“Edgy.” 

That makes him smile.

“ _Edgy_?” 

“Did I say ‘edgy’?” 

“I think so,” he says, nodding. 

She walks over to him then, she wants to close this gap. 

“You’re… you’re my guy.” 

She wraps her arm around his neck again. She kisses him. 

“I am.” 

He smiles, in that devastating way he does, like it hurts him just to breathe. 

“But…?” she starts. “I know there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere. I know you too well.” 

“ _But_ …” he begins, cocking his head. “I want to be more than just your guy.” 

She looks at him—really looks at him—his blue eyes like ice. There’s something cold inside him that she can’t thaw and doesn’t know how to. 

She tilts her head, she can’t bear to look at him. 

“I know,” she says. 

But she doesn’t. She doesn’t know. He pretends it’s a sweet moment. He kisses her on the shoulder, she leans into him. He tightens her grip around her, and she around him. They sit in silence for a minute or two. He feels her skin against his and decides now is not the time to have that conversation. 

Another night. He wants her not to be angry, or defensive. He wants not to feel like an imposition. He needs so badly to be her man. 

. . . . 

She climbs into bed an hour or so later, after him. 

“What’re you reading?” she asks him. 

“ _New Yorker_ ,” he says. 

She lifts her eyebrows up. 

“Really?” 

“Sure.” 

“My New Yorker reading _The New Yorker_.” 

He likes to be called her New Yorker, her anything _._

_Hers._

She takes hold of his arm, rests her head on his shoulder. 

“You ok?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” she says after a long pause. 

“I was thinking,” he starts. “We go to Coney Island this weekend.” 

“Coney Island?”

“Ride the roller coasters, eat some hot dogs.” 

“Isn’t that a New Yorker cliche?” she asks. 

“Is it?” 

“Check in your magazine, mister.” He fake skims the pages, poking his head closer to the print, nose inches from the cartoon. That makes her laugh, a brilliant sound, ringing in his ears.

“Hey?” 

“What?” 

“I love you.”

There is something too simple about the way he says it, like he’s confirming what she’s not yet aware of. A reassurance, a gift for her. 

She squeezes his arm tighter. She rubs her thumb up his sleeve. She is too tired for words, and that is enough, to her. He looks down as she closes her eyes, letting go finally. 

_Perhaps, given time, but not too much time, you could learn to love me._

It’s only the line on the page. A very old issue. 

. . . . 

Later she is sleeping, he beside her. She’s left her watch on the beside table, though he can’t stand it. He can hear it ticking, the long hand winding round and round, letting him know how sick he is, and how much he aches. 

He wants to take it into the kitchen, grab the mallet, and go off. Shattered glass everywhere, springs and shit, a fucking mess. It would terrify her. That would be the point. 

Maybe she would kick him out, he would be too much a danger to her child. He’d have to find a place to live, dip into the bank account she doesn’t know about, rent a studio way downtown or in one of the outer boroughs. 

He thinks of the weekend. He wants to take Franny on her first roller coaster ride. Would she be tall enough to ride? She would never let her. Maybe one of the other one. Do they have spinning tea cups? It’s probably not good for his motion sickness, his weak stomach, and newfound fear of closed spaces. The irony is not lost on him, exchanging men with these fears, men found in holes, left to die. 

He wonders what part of her is broken, to want to be like that. He can’t understand her sometimes. She confounds him. 

He throws the covers off him, suddenly tired of all this shit. The can’t sleep, can’t eat, not really, can’t walk, sometimes talk, can’t fucking move without everything hurting, how embarrassed he feels. He gets up slowly, partly not to make noise, partly because he can’t go any faster. 

He opens the door to their bedroom and walks out quietly, careful with the doorknob. It’s a coordinated act, one he’s used to. He walks into the kitchen, turns on the light above the stove. He opens the cabinet next to the refrigerator and grabs his pills. He fishes one out. No, two. Christ. 

He runs the tap into his cupped hands and brings them to his mouth, as quietly as he can. He exhales, a starved, thirsty man. He is so goddamned tired. 

He waits several minutes before returning to bed. He spends all day alone, wishing for her. 

There is something broken in him, too. 

He walks back into their bedroom, stepping over her discarded blouse. He digs into the covers, feels the coolness of the pillow against his cheek. 

He closes his eyes, lets his tiredness wash over him. 

Then, her voice, soft as a whisper: “You’re not sleeping.” 

And nothing that comes after is a lie. 

. . . . 

They go to his psychiatrist, to talk about his insomnia. When she said doctor he thought she meant his rehab physician. He thought she wanted his prescriptions to be re-evaluated, his stress tests to be performed again. But they take a cab to his psychiatrist, across town, and he feels the bottom of his stomach drop out from under him.

In his mind he imagines her salivating. His shrink will invite her in—of course, she’s clearly booked the appointment, canceled the other. She’ll hear the questions and his eventual answers. He knows she is too afraid to ask, and this is her chance. 

He imagines her judging him for the rest of his life, every day with him a debate over whether he is worth it. Whether his bullshit is worth it. 

Whether he is fit to be with. A fit father, husband. 

If they fit, together. If she fits into his life, and he into hers. 

Who will lose their mind first?

He imagines her tallying all his flaws in her head, drawing a line in the sand over what she can handle and what she cannot.

They sit side-by-side on the shrink’s couch. 

“So…” 

He figures he may as well just get it over with. 

“I guess I’m not sleeping.” 

He can feel her looking at him. 

He knows he’s being a jerk. He knows she’s being supportive. She looks at him openly, her kindness betrays her. He knows this. 

“I can’t sleep at night.” 

“Are you sleeping at all?” 

“Yes. During the day. Usually. I’ll take an Ambien.” 

The pause is almost unbearable. They are not really having a conversation. It’s like that game he’s seen in the movies, with the two cups connected by a string and children talking into either end, waiting for the sound to hit them. He speaks and then waits, speaks and then waits.

“How many?” 

“Just one… maybe two.” 

“These help you?” 

“Yes, the pills help.” 

“Why don’t you take the pills at night?” 

“You mean to sleep at night?”

“Yes.” 

“I don’t know.” 

He feels silly that this has never occurred to him. That he could just put it off twelve hours and then function at least semi-normally like the rest of them. 

“…I guess I got into the habit,” he admits finally. 

“Of sleeping during the day?”

“Yeah.”

His shrink scribbles something on the pad held in front of her. He envies her quick movements, her nimble hands, her handwriting—no doubt illegible, but in the way you’d expect, as a doctor.

“And then staying awake at night?” 

“I try to sleep at night.”

“You do?” 

“Of course I do.” 

She scribbles some more. 

“How long has this been happening?” 

“Two weeks.” 

“Why do you think that is?” 

He looks at her, and at Carrie, who’s staring at his shrink. 

A triangle of shifted glances. 

“Because I sleep during the day.” 

“Plenty of people take long naps during the day and then are able to sleep at night, too. Maybe they get to bed a little later, but eventually they get back into a conventional pattern.” 

“I guess.” 

“Our bodies aren’t predestined to sleep eight hours and stay awake the other sixteen. Or twelve and twelve. The same way you can stay up all night, I’m sure there have been times where you’ve slept for fifteen, eighteen, twenty hours before.” 

He doesn’t say anything. He tries to remember the last time he got eight hours of non-comatose, non-medicated sleep. 

“Yeah.” 

“Peter, what I’m trying to say is — is there a reason why you’ve decided to sleep through your entire days at home?” 

“I haven’t decided. I physically _can’t_ sleep at night.”

“Why do you think that is?” 

He feels like yelling. 

“If I knew don’t you think I’d fix it so I could do stuff during the day and then be able to sleep at night like a fucking normal person?” 

“Is there a reason why you’d want to sleep all day, when you’re home alone, and then stay awake during the night, when you’re with Carrie and Franny?” 

“They’re sleeping at night.” 

“Yes, they are.” 

“This isn’t psychological, it’s physical. Physiological.”

“You’re not sleeping now.” 

She glances down at her watch.

“It’s nearly noon.”

He feels Carrie look at him now. He realizes then she’s holding his hand, running her thumb across his palm. 

He knows the next question she’ll ask and wants to end the goddamn charade already. 

He has never felt like more of a problem, more of a nuisance and burden. 

He almost hates her for being there. 

_Leave already_ , he thinks.

He wonders why she hasn’t. 


	4. Chapter 4

The first time they fight he suspects she’s skipping her meds. 

She says he’s projecting. 

“I’m not projecting anything.” 

“You think something’s wrong with me?” 

“I’m just asking a question.” 

“Are you counting my pills?” 

“Of course not.” 

(He’s not.) 

“I just…”

“What?” 

“I want you to be healthy.”

“I’m fine.” 

“You stayed in bed all day yesterday. Last week you were—”

He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t say that last week she was anything. Maybe he is searching for signs, maybe he is looking for something that simply isn’t there. If he’s already convinced himself there is something to be found out, the clues will appear. They will manifest like phantoms on water. 

Their sexual exploits become evidence of the start of her mania. Her insatiable desire for him is merely the result of imbalances in her brain, of a scale tipping too far to one end. Her fingers up his back, over his spine. 

_Is that really you_ , he’ll say. He doesn’t know. 

“We can’t _fuck_ without you thinking I’ve gone off my meds?” Her words, dripping with venom, with her contempt for him, in this moment—they are a spear in his heart. 

“That’s not… you know that’s not what I said, or what I meant.” 

“Then what?!” 

He turns, places his hand on the frame of the door, steadying himself to be the bigger person. 

“Thought so.” 

“You know, if the tables were turned,” he starts, gripping the doorframe so hard he’s afraid it might splinter. “There is absolutely nothing you could do to make me feel or say those things. If the tables were turned—”

“What fucking tables are you talking about? This isn’t a fucking game.” 

“I let you walk on eggshells around me because it satisfies some fucking broken part of yourself that feels _guilty_ for this happening to me. You look at me like I’m a goddamn cripple and I fucking _let you._ ” 

“That’s not true.” 

“It is. _Have you taken your meds today? Do you need help with that? Don’t walk too far without taking a break. Here, let me tie your_ fucking shoes _for you_!” 

He’s never yelled at her. Not like this. He’s almost out of breath, seething. 

She walks up to him, his hand still gripping the doorframe. She looks down at his feet, then up at him.She keeps her lips tight. She runs her hand through the back of her hair. 

“I think you should stay somewhere else tonight.” 

She walks past him then, takes her keys from the table. It’s too late to call her name, so he just lets her leave. 

. . . . 

She spends her 38th birthday in the hospital. He is sick, almost violently so, recovering from the flu. His immune system is so much weaker now. It is devastating watching him, formerly sprightly, being taken down by something like the flu. It’s April, for God’s sake.

His color turns pale, she can see his bones through his skin. It’s unsettling, and more and more she feels like his caregiver, the person you have _there_ , at the end, and then after. 

She feels like she’s stuck in some twisted documentary of his life. She wonders what her subtitle would be, who they would identify her as. “Partner,” probably. 

She is. She is his partner, and he hers. They come apart, and then together. He is a part of her, and she him. They play off in tandem, pairs of cards played one at a time, as part of a hand. 

And she is playing her part. She plays it well. She plays it dutifully. She plays it skillfully. She plays and she plays and she plays. 

When he turns the corner—the doctor’s words, not hers, she fucking hates that, as if he’s the last man in the relay, about to pass the baton—she allows herself a moment of silence. 

She collects herself alone in the hospital chapel, an eerie echo of Landstuhl. The colored glass makes shadows dance around her feet, cast like shades from when she was a girl. 

She doesn’t pray much anymore. 

She suspects he doesn’t like it, or at the very least it makes him uncomfortable. She fears _his_ judgment, ironically. Her belief in something—someone, maybe—he cannot see, it is just another justification of her madness. 

She does not tell him that more times than she can count, and more than she would ever admit, she prayed to God that he was alive, and then that he’d stay that way. She does not tell him that she believes he was kept alive for this reason: because she asked for it. 

Alone in the chapel, on her 38th birthday, she prays again. She prays for her daughter. She prays for her father, asks that he is alright and safe. She prays he will make it through this night, and the next, and the next birthday too. 

They are constantly on the edge of something. Of what, she cannot tell, but she knows a step or two out is just air, is just nothing, and empty below. 

She takes dutiful notes from the doctor, about what pills to take and when, and how to make sure his condition is improving. She takes in the medical terms, like osmosis. They settle over her skin like mist. 

He says he will need a good week’s rest and plenty of fluids, he’s so dehydrated from the nausea. She goes to the Duane Reade on 2nd and 79th and prepares, gets supplies. She buys a pack of cigarettes. Again, she does not know.

The cashier asks for her ID. She is hardly ever carded anymore, and she still doesn’t drink. 

“It’s your birthday,” the cashier says. She has gorgeous, curly blond hair. 

“Yeah,” she says, small smile.

“Happy birthday.” 

She hands back the card. 

“Thanks.” 

She picks up the plastic bag, puts her drivers license back in her wallet. 

“Have a good night.” 

“Same to you.” 

She throws the cigarettes out on the very next block.

. . . . 

To think it is all bad is a miscalculation. It is not. Some parts are very, very good. Some parts feel exactly as she imagined they would, and wished they would, many years ago. 

Some of it is bruising, and achingly hard. 

But for once in her life her emergency contact is not her sister, and she knows Franny is growing up with a real father figure. This is more than she could ever have hoped for. And she knows it’s no small thing. 

He buys a large projecter one day because he says Franny deserves to see the classics on the big screen. He gets _Robin Hood_ , _Peter Pan_ , _Cinderella_. He gets _Fantasia_ , too, but she vetoes it, afraid it will scare her. 

“The dancing broomsticks?!” 

“The what?” 

“The… the broomsticks. They’re like… alive, or something.” 

“So?” 

“That’s scary!” 

“But they’re broomsticks.”

“Trust me.” 

He drops it after that. 

He makes a night of it. He buys Twizzlers and three kinds of popcorn. 

It’s a rare night when Carrie lets him take complete charge. He tells Franny earlier in the afternoon that they’ll make ice cream sundaes and she awaits, rapturously, and she thinks he looks like a father, they feel like a family. 

It’s more than just look and feel. It is. 

As much as she is playing, she is, and they are.

Franny falls asleep a half hour into _Peter Pan_ and he carries her to bed. She is just light enough that he can, like feathers, like her mother.

She lets him tuck her in, which she never does. It is her last battleground, the one place where he doesn’t encroach. But tonight she lets him. She lingers in the doorway, of course, watches from close range as he pulls the covers flush to her chin. He brushes the hair from her face, the ringlets falling helplessly onto her forehead still. 

She thinks he might kiss her goodnight, but he refrains. She wonders whether he ever got this. As a boy, or maybe later. There is so much she still doesn’t know about him, and so much he won’t tell her. She’s left only to infer. She feels like an open wound to him. He knows before and after, and now and then. 

But she knows only what she’s seen, and little else. The rest is lies, stories, make believe. 

What he made her believe. 

If she had the courage, she would ask him.

_What’s your story?_

The parts, the parts she thinks she knows, they don’t fit together, two jagged pieces of a tossed-away puzzle. 

_Who are your parents?_

She wonders how lost he’s felt, sitting alone in deserts, cradling guns and dead bodies. She wonders what he dreams of. She thinks of him constantly. He consumes her. 

_Why are we here?_

These are the inessentials, she could go easily without. But still. It eats away at her. The not knowing. 

She knows as much about one person as anyone can without ever asking. 

In her mind, this is how the conversation goes: 

_What’s your story?_

_I have no story. You know my story._

_Who are your parents?_

_My parents are gone, same as yours._

_Why are we here?_

_I was about to ask you the same thing._

She assigns truths the way one assigns blame: carefully, thinking through all permutations of reality but without any regard for it. 

. . . .

“Did you ever… what was your life like in Berlin?” 

It’s fall, just past a year as two. 

It has been a very good month. This drapes over them like a sheen, and it illuminates everything around them that previously seemed too dark to bear. 

He smiles without coaxing. And she does less coaxing. 

If he were to ask her if she was happy, she thinks she would say yes. She feels it more easily than she has in many years. 

“I… what do you mean?” 

“I mean… what was your life like there? In all my time knowing you, it’s the only gap.” 

“I didn’t see you for two years.” 

She finishes the sentence for him. 

“Yeah.” 

“It was…”

They’re walking back from dinner. It’s cold, and dark, and she’s linked her arm through his. 

“What?” 

“It was different.” 

“Different how?” 

“I was out of the Company.” 

“Right.”

“For the first time in a while. I mean, really… _out._ Out, like on purpose.” 

They pause at the corner and wait for the light to change. 

“You were halfway across the world,” he continues.

“No. I mean, yes, I was. I was halfway around the world and away from home. But that wasn’t it. I never really thought about that. I guess that makes me really selfish.” 

He looks down at her. “No,” he smiles. He’s about to say that it makes her brave but he knows it will embarrass her. She doesn’t need that from him. 

“I needed something else, and something different. I was so… detached from everything.” 

The light changes now and they cross together. He pulls his hand from his pocket and grasps hers firmly. 

“It saved me,” she says. 

He doesn’t ask what. Or who, maybe. 

“I didn’t know how to live without all the things I thought I needed.” 

“Like what?” 

“Like… my job, for one.” She laughs to herself. “Without… control. Independence. My dad.” 

He notices she’s been talking about her dad more and more. It’s been almost four years. He can’t fathom the kind of loss she feels at his absence, and that permanence. He has nothing to compare it to. Even losing her, he knows it’s not the same. 

“You miss him.” 

“Yes,” she says, nodding her head slowly. 

“Did you think that was it?” 

They walk a few paces before she asks, “What was it?” 

“Berlin. Your life there. That… that was it for you. Your…” his words trail off and he unconsciously pulls her closer, afraid of her answer. 

“Yes. I think I did.” 

She can see him flinch out of the corner of her eyes and feels the need to backtrack. 

“I’m… I’m glad it wasn’t. But I was happy there, and I remember feeling that _that_ feeling was… well that _had_ to have been it, right? It never dawned on me that there might be something after. I never wished for it, or… didn’t wish for it, I just never considered it. It didn’t seem probable.” 

“I don’t think it was.” 

“No. I guess you’re right.” 

“For what it’s worth, it never dawned on me that there might be something after, either.” 

“Lucky…” she says. 

. . . . 

She buries it in some part herself, the reason why, the thing propelling her forward, hidden behind glass, gears locked into her limbs. 

She believes it is her sense of duty, to country and her child and sometimes, in the golden hour, to herself. 

Days becomes years and the years become her life, and she finds it in every part of herself. It is why she is a mother and an orphan. It is why she made a home for a homeless man. 

She grips onto her child’s hand tightly, afraid she might become untethered, thrown out of orbit, into a universe lacking gravity. 

There is little else pulling her down except the fear and the belief and the conviction that without it she is lost. 

She cannot let go.

. . . . 

They’re walking home from the psychiatrist’s office. 

He’s quiet, contemplative. He sticks his hands in his pockets and scrunches his shoulders, a loner’s pose. He is impenetrable. 

She wonders what it is about him that she finds irresistible. It is the truth. She cannot resist him. In his moods, the peaks and troughs, she can’t. She wants to fix him, or maybe just to feel like it wasn’t her who broke him. 

The videos of him on the news replay in her head, a torturous reel. She watches as his eyes water, as he falls to the ground, as he convulses, as he lays there nearly lifeless. She can still smell the abandoned barracks. How it smelled of disinfectant, then of vomit. The glass was cold, and she wondered, too: how alone he felt, in those final moments. She always feared dying alone. 

They walk noiselessly to the pharmacy near the apartment. He hands his prescription for anti-anxiety medication to the pharmacist. They wait in silence while the bottle is filled. He has to sign for the prescription and he takes the pen tentatively. She can’t peel her eyes away, even as she knows he’s embarrassed, and this is only making it worse. 

She watches as he scrawls his name across the receipt: thin waxy paper, smudges. He has child’s handwriting. 

He is pathetic, and so she pities him. 

He doesn’t cap the pen when he’s finished, so she does it for him. 

“Thank you,” she says quietly to the pharmacist as he grabs the white paper bag. He stuffs it into the pocket of his oversize coat and turns. 

The pharmacist gives her a look. A look as if to say, “I pity you. I’m sorry. Good luck.” 

She’s never felt more sorry for herself than in this moment, chasing him out of the drug store. Silence: in the elevator, in the hallway, until the door closes. 

“You gonna give me the silent treatment the rest of the day?” 

“Not now, Carrie.” 

It is times like these they both feel like they are living with children. 

“You can’t sulk all day.” 

He hangs his coat in the closet. He does the same for hers. 

_For her._

She spends untold hours deciphering his motives, getting to the heart and core of him.

She winds his gestures and words around a spool of malice, and then unwinds them.

He counts her pills, he reads to Franny, he leaves the lamp on in the living room, he hangs her coat. 

Slowly she unwinds. 

They build their relationship on assumptions. She supposes all relationships are built like this, a precarious house of cards.

He loves her. On top of that, he needs her. On top of that, he cannot leave. On top of that, he wouldn’t want to. On top of that, he doesn’t mean it, when he says it. On top of that, this shall pass.

She dismantles the structure methodically: 

He doesn’t. He doesn’t need her. He can leave. He wants to. He means all of it. 

What if their entire life was a charade? What if it was a dream she had, a fantasy from a worse time, and he’s not alive, he’s dead in fact? What if he never loved her?

She spirals, free from facts, finally free. 

. . . . 

“You want some tea?” 

“No thanks.” 

“It’s cold. You must be cold.” 

“You know what I want is a fucking beer.” 

She doesn’t respond, fills the kettle with water and turns the stove on. 

“Well. I’m making tea.” 

She turns away from him. 

Then, a minute later: “Why, Carrie?” 

“What?” she says mindlessly, watching the steam collect around the kettle’s spout. 

“Why… why did you _ambush_ me?” he says. 

“What?” 

“The shrink!… Goddammit, Carrie,” he says calmly, which makes it worse. 

“Excuse me for caring.” 

“Bull _shit_!” 

She turns sharply. “Keep your voice down… The neighbors.” 

“I don’t give a fuck about the neighbors.” 

She thinks to herself, _he has never yelled like this_. She thinks that every time he yells.

“Calm down.” 

“You wonder why I don’t tell you these things for weeks. It’s because you pull shit like this!” 

She turns the stove off and walks to the cabinet and grabs a tea bag and mug. 

“Grow up. You know, if you weren’t so preoccupied with what everyone else thought about your recovery, and the way you walked, and the way your hands shake, and your fucking _penmanship_ you’d probably get some sleep every once in a while.” 

“Yeah, and you’ll sure as hell never let me forget.” 

She slams her hand on the counter. For all her erraticism, it’s a measured, carefully controlled response of outrage. 

“Goddamnit Quinn!” 

And then: “I am so sick and _tired_ of soothing your ego.”She shakes her head and exhales. “I am so tired. I am so tired of all this.” She leans back against the counter and crosses her arms. “You know what? Just take the fucking pills.”

He smiles to himself, self-satisfied. 

“You’re one to talk.” 

“I know, I am one to talk. But you know, when I was really sick, I understood that I needed to take them. Eventually, I _got_ it.” 

“I’m not sick.” 

“Ok. You’re not…. But I am _so tired_ of all this. And I will not stand by and watch you suffer for your pride and your dignity. It’s just… too important.” 

She carries her mug into the study and quietly closes the door. She expects to hear the door slam, or the unmistakable clang of a plastic bill bottle hitting the wall. Instead it’s only silence. They retreat to opposite ends of the apartment, stretched to corners. 

She reads a book, answers emails from work. She thinks about her father, which she does now, more often. Every time they fight she wonders whose fault it is and if she’s turning into her parents. She has only a few more years until it starts to register in her daughter’s memory as “trouble” and become fodder for the next generation. 

She thinks about Islamabad, which she hardly ever does. She thinks of the walls she built up around herself and how porous her life is now. She misses the armor.

Across the threshold he sits on the couch and writes: his name, on a legal pad, print and signature. Four times, eight, twenty-four, sixty-eight. He gets to eighty-three before his hand cramps. 

. . . . 

Later that night she emerges, finally. The apartment is quiet around her. Quiet and dark, black almost. She can hear the street noise, the distant chatter, almost. Muddled voices walking home from dinners out, drinks with friends, long days at work. 

She opens the bedroom door quietly. He’s facing toward her, his body curved, the shape of a question mark. 

He lifts his head when she enters. Moonlight streams through the windows in bars. She can see his face, or a portion of it. He looks tired and beat and worn and hardly anything like himself. She forgets he never sleeps at night. And so he must always look like this. 

Hours have passed and with it the sheen of their anger and pseudo-indifference. She walks slowly toward him and inserts herself into his shadow, bending her body to his. 

He stretches his arm around her waist and pulls her closer. She lets him. Their feet tangle. She places her hand over his and one beneath her cheek.

The air in the apartment is cold and still, and his breath is hot on the back of her neck. 

“We need help,” she says finally. She is soft and gentle, voice hardly above a whisper, a secret between them. 

His hand shifts on her stomach. 

“I know,” he says. 

Of course he does. 

It sits in the space between them then. She squeezes his hand a little tighter. He brings his free hand to her face and brushes the hair away, so he can see her properly. 

In front of her, on the bedside table, she sees the crinkled white paper bag and the orange pill bottle with his name printed on the side, the seal still fixed to the cap. 

He holds her, then shuts his eyes. 


End file.
